Like all boys growing up in Rome during the 1930s and 40s, Franco Romagnoli was expected to join the Balilla, Italy's fascist youth organization. But with political divisions running deep in the families within his palazzo, he and his motley group of friends were soon recruited into the underground resistance, racing around on bicycles and smuggling messages and weapons for the partisans. In this warm, episodic memoir Romagnoli describes growing up in war, first as allies of the Germans and then as their occupied enemies. Yet as real as the danger was he was still, first and foremost, a boy turning into a man, and the war was only the backdrop to age-old struggles for love and success.

"This book reads like a movie—one of those wonderful Felliniesque narratives filled with characters and events that could only happen in Italy. It's a beautifully told tale that illuminates one of the darkest and least understood periods in Italian and World War Two history, told with the humor and optimism of youth."—Paul Paolicelli